Provisioning Lync PIC federation via VLSC

Background

Recently on a customer deployment we had to setup and configure federation with Yahoo! Messenger. This required the purchase of Lync PIC (Public IM Connectivity) Licenses so that we could get Microsoft to provision our request with Yahoo!.

1. Public IM Connectivity licenses are purchased under an Enterprise, Select, or Open Value Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement. For details and pricing information, contact your Large Account Reseller (LAR) or reseller.

3. If the agreement and order are valid, Microsoft Volume Licensing Service (MVLS) creates an entitlement and sends you a letter inviting you to provision public IM connectivity.

4. Use the instructions provided in the letter to access MVLS, and then start the provisioning of public IM connectivity by specifying the required information.

Wow, 2012 and we’re talking about letters eh?

Well this post wont help with points 1,2 and 3 but hopefully I can help out on point 4. After purchasing the PIC licenses you will received an email from Microsoft acknowledging the order

We are pleased to inform you that Microsoft has received and accepted an order for the following Online Service (s) for the quantities as detailed in the Order Details table below:

Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (OCS PIC)

(the email also incidentally offers the following helpful advice: “Step 3: Activate the online service by logging into Microsoft Volume Licensing Services (MVLS) website at https://licensing.microsoft.com and entering the required information as noted above.” – great, but WHERE?!)

Before we proceed you will need to know your SIP domains & your Access edge FQDN. If your unsure you can get them from the Lync topology builder. I’m also assuming that your infrastructure is configured for federation and that your Edge service is correctly provisioned.

Select “No” unless you know otherwise (its for migrating settings from one contract to another)

Enter the contact details for the site & “continue activation”

Enter your Access Edge FQDN & primary SIP domain at the top of the screen then any additional domains at the bottom (you don’t need to duplicate the primary SIP domain into this box)

Either complete secondary contact information or tick the box to reuse the contacts from the first page

Select which networks you want to federate with (Don’t forget you can control access to each network on your Lync server too so it might make sense to just select them all now)

Click “continue Activation”

If you get an error at this point with a warning that it was “We were unable to validate your data. Please try again” it doesn’t necessarily mean your data is incorrect. I found that I had to click “continue activation” about 6 times in a row and then magically it would advance to the next screen…

Review and confirm your data before clicking “Activate Service”

Again this might need a few clicks before it takes

The final screen should be a confirmation that they have received your request and you will also get an email confirming the activation request.

From here you just need to keep your fingers crossed, activation can take anything from a few hours to a few days.